Charles Dickens’s Networks: Public Transport and the Novel by Jonathan H. Grossman ’85
Charles Dickens’s Networks: Public Transport and the Novel by Jonathan H. Grossman ’85 Oxford University Press, March 2012 The same week in February 1836 that Charles Dickens was hired to write his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, the first railway line in London opened. Charles Dickens’s Networks explores the rise of the global, high-speed passenger transport network in the 19th century and the indelible impact it made on Dickens’s work. The advent first of stagecoaches, then of railways and transoceanic steamships made round-trip...
read moreintimate geographies: poems by Bo Thorne Niles ’62
intimate geographies: poems by Bo Thorne Niles ’62 Finishing Line Press, 2012 “Although its title may call to mind Elizabeth Bishop, the poems in intimate geographies conjure the alert, lucid spirit of May Swenson as they shape their way toward emotional heights and depths. In this collection, which is also recollection, the poet’s formal and verbal inventiveness is deftly balanced with a tender attention to sensory details. The resulting poems map, and honor really, lives that are dear, vivid, all-too-swiftly passing, and therefore, in...
read moreMy Journey Translated by Katherine Gratwick Baker ’55
My Journey: How One Woman Survived Stalin’s Gulag by Olga Adamova-Sliozberg Translated by Katherine Gratwick Baker ’55 Northwestern University Press, August 2011 In the spring of 1936, Olga Adamova-Sliozberg’s husband, a professor at Moscow State University, was arrested and accused of being a Trotskyite. A short time later, Adamova-Sliozberg herself was arrested as the wife of “an enemy of the people.” Torn from her children, she spent a decade subjected to grueling interrogations and a prison regime designed to crush inmates...
read moreCherry Blossoms by Ann McClellan ’68
Cherry Blossoms: The Official Book of the National Cherry Blossom Festival by Ann McClellan ’68 National Geographic Society, January 2012 Washington, D.C.’s cherry blossom trees have enchanted residents and visitors for one hundred years. This spring, the National Cherry Blossom Festival celebrates the centennial of the gift of 3,000 cherry trees from Tokyo to our nation’s capital. To mark the event, National Geographic has published this richly illustrated history by Ann McClellan. The book tells the story of how the gift spawned our...
read moreAmerican Veterans on War by Elise Forbes Tripp ’60
American Veterans on War: Personal Stories from World War II to Afghanistan by Elise Forbes Tripp ’60 Olive Branch Press, November 2011 American Veterans on War is a timely, oral-history collection that gathers stories of war as experienced by those involved firsthand. The words of 55 veterans—ranging in age from 20 to 90 years—raise questions about when the wars are worth fighting, what missions can and can’t be won, and the costs and benefits of the United States intervention, both around the world and domestically. Recent veterans...
read moreFragile Beginnings by Adam Wolfberg, M.D. ’88
Fragile Beginnings: Discoveries and Triumphs in the Newborn ICU by Adam Wolfberg, M.D. ’88 A Harvard Health Publications Book Beacon Press, February 2012 Half a million babies are born prematurely in the United States every year. As doctors and parents make decisions about life-saving care in the first hours of a premature infant’s life, they must grapple with profound ethical and scientific questions: Who should be saved? How aggres-sively should doctors try to salvage the life of a premature baby, who may be severely neurologically...
read moreMainers in the Civil War by Harry Gratwick ’55
Mainers in the Civil War by Harry Gratwick ’55 The History Press, April 2011 Early on the morning of April 12, 1861, a mortar shell arched across the sky and exploded over Fort Sumter in the middle of Charleston Harbor. For the next 34 hours, Confederate artillery pounded Federal troops with shot and shell until the fort’s commander, Major Robert Anderson, surrendered and agreed to evacuate his men. Far to the north, the great state of Maine did not witness any Civil War battles. Mainers, however, contributed to the war in many important...
read moreWho’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? by Touré ’89
Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? What It Means to Be Black Now by Touré ’89 Free Press, September 2011 In the 21st century, racial attitudes have become more complicated and nuanced than ever. Inspired by a president unlike any Black man ever seen on America’s national stage, many are searching for new ways of understanding Blackness. Commentator and journalist Touré begins his book by examining the concept of “Post-Blackness,” a term defining artists who are proud to be Black but don’t want to be limited by identity...
read moreThe Greatest Game Ever Pitched by Jim Kaplan ’62
The Greatest Game Ever Pitched: Juan Marichal, Warren Spahn, and the Pitching Duel of the Century by Jim Kaplan ’62 Triumph Books, February 2011 Taking the mound at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park in 1963 were 42-year-old Warren Spahn and 25-year-old Juan Marichal, the wunderkind headed for the Hall of Fame. As one scoreless inning followed another en route to a 16th-inning climax, those in attendance sensed that they were watching a pitching duel for the ages. The event surpassed the world of statistics and entered into the realm of...
read moreWe Go As Captives by Neil Goodwin ’58
We Go As Captives: The Royalton Raid and the Shadow War on the Revolutionary Frontier by Neil Goodwin ’58 Vermont Historical Society, October 2010 It was October 16, 1780, in Royalton, Vermont. With no warning and in almost complete silence, a war party of 265 Canadian Mohawks and Abenakis, led by five British and French-Canadian soldiers, materialized from the forest at dawn. They moved so fast and so quietly there was no time for anyone to escape and spread the alarm. Prisoners were taken, and the town of Royalton was burned to the...
read more